Well last week we went to court for the trial to terminate our girls' parental rights. The best part was during cross examination they basically got one of the biological parents to admit they were unable to care for the girls' needs. This is the same parent that has attended every hearing, the other hasn't shown up since last year even though they are apparently living together. The parent that isn't showing up currently has a warrant out for their arrest. Well when it was all said & done the judge terminated their parental rights. The order is scheduled to be entered at the begining of July. The parents each have 20 days from that date to file an appeal. Once we left the court room the girls' CASA worker went & spoke with the bio parent who attended & they asked if we would send updates on the girls, we agreed. The CASA workers seem to think they won't be filing an appeal. For one, they realize they didn't complete the case plan & the appeal would be denied, but also they would have to raise the money to pay their own attorney this time. The state has been supplying them with an attorney up until this point. Now basically what will happen is CPS will assign us an adoption worker & that person will prepare the girls' redacted or "de-identified" files. These are the big files of everything that led to the girls being in care, along with everything that happened since. There are many things about their past we just don't know & now we will hopefully be able to find out a little more about their parents' past also. Once we read the file & agree to the adoption, we are just waiting for the 90 day period to be over. Once a parents rights are terminated in Texas, there is a 90 day period before that child can be legally adopted. We have an attorney lined up & names picked out. So we're really excited to just breathe that giant sigh of relief & start living our lives with our daughters! (The picture above is my little Tuck showing off a fish he caught with his Daddy!).
